A car buddy of mine has a created a nice little business doing vinyl wraps (and clear bra) for the local car scene this past weekend. He started out doing blacked out headlight housing/HID retrofit/LEDs for a local business and shifted attention to what he's doing now. He's a very entrepreneurial young man.

There were plenty of nice rides but I was running low on batt. but managed to capture just of couple of random ones.

I'm not a fan of wrapped cars- especially since I can't polish out the scratches.

orrkwankit wrote:I'm not a fan of wrapped cars- especially since I can't polish out the scratches. ]

Having been in the sign industry for 17 years, I'm very impressed with wraps. It's something early on I attempted to do, but it's very difficult to do correctly. 3M makes some amazing products now that make it very easy for a skilled tech to do a beautiful job on. That said, I'd only ever do matte black...

As a European I only know the notorious image of those "love wagons" of the 70ies. So what sense does a "Sandman" "ute" make? I can think of a lot of slippery jokes, but there must be an angle to it, that I do not see.

They get used a lot as trade vehicles to carry around tools and materials. Its much more likely to see a tradesman/contractor here driving around in a ute than a van, which is more common in Europe. Ute is short for utility, and is the exactly the same in principle as an American "pickup". As to why we use them instead of vans, besides the long-standing cultural image that "it's Australian", I have no idea. It could be because some of them have huge engines/go-fast-bits while still being able to cart things around.

The panelvan, despite its notoriety, was presumably targeted at being able to camp in the back, rather than setting up a tent, and still being able to fit in a surfboard etc.